Lawson vs. Westbrook? Nope, I’m not done. Like an eternal flame, this argument persists. Neil Paine was fashionable late to the discussion but had some very compelling points about why Westbrook is better than I’m giving him credit for. Of course, like all good riddles, when we dig into the data, we find something else entirely. There’s a bit of math to go over. I’ll be hitting Turnover Percentage, then Usage then Assist Percentage (all of these formulas can be found at Basketball-Reference). Enjoy!

Turnover Percentage

Neil makes the following claim.

Lawson is a better shooter than Westbrook, but it’s hard to argue he has better “handles” (objectively, ballhandling being measured by the ability to avoid turnovers). Westbrook and Lawson had identical turnover %’s last season (16.2%) and Westbrook did it with a much higher usage and more touches per minute.

…

Having a 16.2 TOV% while using 32.7% of possessions is a much more impressive ballhandling accomplishment than having a 16.2 TOV% while using 22.0% of possessions.

While Neil’s numbers don’t match up with those listed at his site Basketball-Reference, this point is true. Lawson had a Turnover % of 14.7%, while Westbrook had a Turnover % of 14.2%. And yes, Lawson’s Usage at 21.2% is much lower than Westbrook’s at 32.7%

A common theme we see is that to fool voters all players need to do is shoot more. More shots means more points. In this case the exact same trick works. Per game Westbrook gets 50% more turnovers than Lawson. So, how is his turnover percentage as low? Well he just shoots more. The equation for Turnover % is:

A player can lower this in three ways. First they can get fewer turnovers. They can also get to the line more (which Westbrook does). And, of course, they can just take more shots. Westbrook does this in spades. This ties in nicely with our next them in fact.

Let’s Add in Usage

When the team has the ball, there are one of two things that can happen. They can shoot it (field goal attempt or free throw) or they can lose it (either by steal, losing it out of bounds or a shot clock violation) So we can sum up how every single possession ends by adding these up. And we can figure out which player ended each possession by tracking how many times they turned the ball over or took a shot relative to the team. And this is just what Usage does:

Fun equation right? Anyway, Usage is often used as a way to estimate which players handle the ball more. After all, as Neil points out, if I turn the ball over less but I handle the ball less, I may be a worse ball handler.

There’s a few problems though. First, Usage doesn’t take into account assists. Lawson could have a higher Usage rate if instead passing he just took a shot. Second, Usage goes up if you just shoot more. So putting the two problems together. Westbrook turns the ball over a lot. Except his Turnover Percentage is low because he shoots a lot. His Usage is also higher, because he shoots a lot! And guess what? Westbrook is about to show you another way to use the same trick!

Assist Percentage

That, coupled with the fact that their Ast%’s were practically even (30.2% for Lawson, 29.8% for Westbrook), means it’s difficult to objectively argue that “Ty Lawsonhas better ball handling ability than Westbrook”.

Neil’s numbers finally match up with those on his site. Alright, this one was a head-scratcher. Lawson gets 1.1 more assists per game and 1.2 more assists per 36 minutes. How on earth could Westbrook distribute the ball as well? Well let’s examine the Assist Percentage formula:

What we are looking for is how often a player assists their team mates shots. Last year the Nuggets made 2572 shots and the Thunder made 2462. Close enough for government work. If Lawson has more assists and their teams have similar totals, how does Westbrook tie him? Let’s look at that another way. Last year, Nuggets that weren’t Ty Lawson made 2198 shots, whereas Thunder players that weren’t Westbrook made 1884 shots.

By taking more shots, Westbrook lowers the total number of shots his team can take and thus ups his Assist percentage! Isn’t math fun?

Statistics like Turnover Percentage, Usage and Assist Percentage seem valuable and there is information in them. However, without making sure to examine them closely, we can be fooled in the same way NBA voters and fans are fooled year after year. There is a very simple fact about basketball: missing shots is bad. In doing analysis we can’t ignore this fact. As I’ve shown above, three advanced statistics all go up if a player just shoots more and it doesn’t matter if they shoot well or not. To just take these at face value and not ask: “Is the player actually shooting well?” is a good way to get burned.

To end on a positive note though. I like comments like Neil’s and J.A. Sherman’s (regarding Westbrook’s elite games) When we examine a problem, we have to start with a theory and a criteria for testing the theory. The outcome may not always be pleasant (I am still not swayed that Westbrook had an MVP caliber season last year) but when we ask good questions, we can make sure we get good answers.

22 Responses to "Just Shoot More: How to fool Advanced Stats"

I know you only mentioned Collins as a passing reference but I think there is a profound point there.

There are many reasons that a bad coach (not Collins) might reject advanced stats and these have been well covered on this blog. However, a potentially very good reason for a smart coach like Collins to reject advanced statistics is because it involves a lot of black boxes that often don’t correspond to his intuitive sense of reality. Collins may not know, or even be interested in, the dynamics of the denominator in the usage and % statistics. He just knows that the output doesn’t correspond well with the, seemingly useful, intuitive sense that he’s developed over decades of coaching.

A challenge for us in the analytics world is to make these measures less of a black box and to demonstrate how they translate back into a logical, intuitive sense of how the game is played and won. If the measure is actually useful, that should be an achievable goal. If not, maybe we need to challenge the measure, or at least refine it.

I’m using the Ken Pomeroy formulas for TOV% and USG% (we use the simpler Hollinger formulas at the site). In those, usage does include assists, but it also correlates incredibly close to the Hollinger formula, so there isn’t going to be a big difference.

Anyway, you didn’t really ever address the point I was making about ballhandling. Even though you’d think it has a built-in usage component, TOV% alone isn’t a great indicator of ballhandling skill. The all-time leader (min 10K MP) is Matt Bonner, that ankle-breaking crossover master:

My point was that among two players with identical TOV%, the one with higher usage did the better ballhandling job because it becomes progressively more difficult to avoid turnovers when you’re putting more pressure on the defense, especially as a guard.

Neil,
Apparently I have to pay for those, are those equations listed anywhere? Also, the point is simple. A player could dribble up to half court, take a shot and they’d lower their TOV% and increase their Usage. I can’t agree (based on the easily available stats) that a player taking bad shots makes them a better ball handler. Even going with the argument of more usage correlates with more turnovers, well turnovers are a built in part of usage.

Very nice work. I had not thought to look at the effect of more shooting on any of these measures. Interesting to know that PER is not the only metric which can be cured just by shooting more, never mind the result. PER, in fact, requires one to make nearly a third of shots to increase; who woulda thunk it?

They’re in Basketball on Paper — it’s all based on Dean Oliver’s more complex individual possession estimation formula. It’s a brutally complicated formula, but you’d do well to look into it.

As for TOV%, it’s a skill curve argument (which I know you’ll fight to the death over), right? Even though usage has a turnover component, and turnover pct has a usage component, Usg (or some other proxy for putting pressure on the defense) has to adversely affect TOV%, lest we consider Matt Bonner the best ballhandler ever.

Ari,
Doug Collins appears to have some idea what he’s doing. And in that article he mentioned 20 pages. As we just showed, even “simple” advanced stats (yes I get the irony of that juxtaposition) can be misleading. If you’re presented a bunch of data you don’t understand, it’s best to either learn it or ignore it. And as Collins may not feel inclined to learn advanced stats, I’m not against him ignoring them.

I am struggling to understand how ball handling can be considered a subjective idea/skill. A good ball handler is someone who handles the ball without turning it over, right?

Or are there other things I am missing? Are we talking about flashy cross overs, spin moves, and in and outs? If so, why? Those are means not an end (and often are only secondary in their relevance to thinks like strength, quickness, speed).

I agree there is some risk involved if you handle the ball and attack the basket a lot. There are plenty of highly productive players out there who turn the ball over for this reason but are still productive players, because they hit a high percentage of their shots and/or rack up assists. They risk a lot by attacking with the ball but generate rewards for their teams.

Westbrook presents all of the risk without the big payoffs that other truly great offensive players give.

“My point was that among two players with identical TOV%, the one with higher usage did the better ballhandling job because it becomes progressively more difficult to avoid turnovers when you’re putting more pressure on the defense, especially as a guard”

Neil, higher usage doesn’t necessarily imply more ball handling. It can mean that, but it could also just mean shooting a lot.

Historically, Steve Nash has handled the ball an incredible amount, but his usage rate has never exceeded 25%.

That seems to be part of Dre’s point and I think it responds to your early comments quite directly. Although again, maybe I am misunderstanding.

Given the way the denominator is calculated, isn’t it possible that a player, like Westbrook, by taking a lot more shots, could have a significantly higher USG% than a player like Lawson even if their relative time handling the ball was roughly equivalent? In that sense, Westbrook wouldn’t really be “pressuring the defense” any more, he’s just shooting more. You have to assume that the shots are a good proxy for actual time handling the ball.

His argument seems to be that Westbrook artificially deflates his TOV% by “shooting a lot”. My questions are: why the implication that increased shooting somehow doesn’t carry an increased turnover risk? And do you really consider Matt Bonner to be the best ballhandler in NBA history?

Matt Bonner is maybe one of the smartest ballhandlers in the NBA (dude is a former academic all-american as i recall) and he’s played with the same offense and same players for years and years now. Plus, of course, the Spurs offense doesn’t involve him holding the ball for more than a couple seconds at a time.

Dre, consider 82games.com. Something I use that I notice that no one else uses is assist/ball handling turnover ratio. I noticed that players’ ast/bht ratios stay consistent even when their assists go up, unless they have a very small sample of assists.

Some players (Chris Paul, Steve Nash, rajon rondo, Deron Williams, jose Calderon, etc) have ratios above 10, while westbrook has one below 5. I always found this interesting. This stayed consistent even in the two seasons westbrook averaged over 8 assists a game. I think one overlooked part of westbrook’s game is lack of good ball handling ability. I don’t know what that days about him and Lawson (ast/bht ratio above 6).

My main point is this. Westbrook’s handles are pretty weak. Analysts tend to miss that. All they see is athleticism. t/o% doesn’t work because guys who shoot hardly turn it over. They don’t get assists though. ast/bht ratio, I think, does a better job.

Jumping in here – Sure, shooting the ball a lot may or may not carry an increased turnover risk. However, this begs the question: Why does Westbrook shoot so much, when he’s not particularly good at converting those shots into points?

Also, if ballhandling is defined by TOV%, then sure Bonner may be a great ballhandler. I think its more likely, though, that the metric is broken, because, as Dre showed, simply taking a shot can decrease the percentage.

On the surface, Russell Westbrook’s 2011-12 mark of .102 WP48 makes him seem like a pretty average player. However, to me it is actually quite impressive to maintain that average mark with his extremely high usage rate of 32.7%, and that has value in my IMO.

By having a player like Westbrook on your team, you now can have the luxury of employing highly productive players with low usage rates like Serge Ibaka and Sefolosha who can focus most of their attention on defense and rebounding and not so much on scoring. If Westbrook was replaced by say, Ty Lawson, Ibaka and Sefolosha would be forced to shoot more, lowering their WP48’s. I think its no coincidence that many of the role players on the thunder and heat have WP48 marks over .100. These players don’t have to worry about scoring like they would on a different team and different teammates.

Now of course, it would be great if Westbrook could have a .200 mark WP48 like Durant, but players who do so with a +30 usage rate are extremely hard to come and usually once in a generation type players (MJ, Lebron, D. Wade, Durant, Shaq, etc).

Doug Collins deserves a post of his own. He’s a smart coach that understands the game to a point that he uses advanced stats without actually paying attention to formulas. He clearly shares some concepts.

Brandon,
Sefolosha is a pretty average shooter for a SG, but Ibaka is 54% for his career, and seems to be expanding his range. In addition, I have to believe that Durant guy could cope with a few more shots per game. I also suspect there’s an atrophy effect here; having watched Andrew Bynum battle for great position, then visibly deflate when the ball goes to the other side of the floor, I can imagine Westbrook’s teammates losing the will to get open after his 25th or 30th FG attempt. On the other hand, I’ve never understood how Durant and Harden never organized a Code Red on their ballhog PG, so I may be completely misunderstanding the team dynamic.

Westbrook achieved his .102 WP48 taking more shots per game than Kevin Durant and James Harden. No way Westbrook should be applauded for taking so many shots when he isn’t particularly good at getting them in the hoop.

Yes Sefolosha is a pretty average shooter for a SG, but you have to look at the context of those shots. Last year his eFG% of .532 seems great on the surface but his usage rate was only 10.6%. His role basically was to shoot wide-open catch-and-shoot 3s allowing him to dramatically raise his % from 3 and rarely do anything else on offense. Giving him a wide-open three in the corner is a non-trivial task and its not as simple as just “give him more shots.” A defender needs to be drawn off him first to allow him to have that wide open uncontested chance to shoot. As jbrett points out, Ibaka also looks great with 54% fg but his usage was only 15.7% the last 2 seasons. I’m not exactly sure if I would say he’s expanding his range. His shots largely are close range dunks and layups and the occasional wide-open uncontested catch-and-shoot mid range jumper. Getting the ball to him in his “range” or to him for an uncontested open jumper is also non-trivial. It’s reasonable to believe that if both these players are forced to take more shots their eFG% would decline (probably due to taking more contested shots) resulting in a decline in WP48 for them.

I agree that Durant can probably stand to take more shots but at his 31.3% usage last year there may not be much higher you can take him to maintain his eFG%, I’m not sure. Regarding Andrew Bynum deflating when not getting shots, I would point out that his best WP48 year of .281 post-injury came in 10-11 when he only had a 17.6% usage rate. For comparison, last year he had a .208 WP48 with a 23.8% usage rate and with a lower eFG%.

My point is an average/high usage player like Westbrook can have value with a properly constructed team of low usage/high productivity players around him. A team without Westbrook would not have this luxury.

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